Prominent Manhattan Dentist Indicted
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A prominent dentist who allegedly supplied his mistress with prescription drugs was indicted yesterday after the woman’s sister pulled the plug on the couple’s scheme.
Prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, charged Jeffrey Burkes, 58, an oral surgeon who had served as a forensic consultant for the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, with writing 80 prescriptions for his girlfriend under false names. They also said he administered opiates to her intravenously at his Fifth Avenue dental office. He pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors also charge that Dr. Burkes lied under oath during a custody hearing between his girlfriend, identified as Shari Perl Herman, and her ex-husband. Prosecutors said in 2004, Dr. Burkes testified that he never supplied her with drugs. In fact, prosecutors charge he supplied Ms. Herman with Percocet, Vicodin, and Hydrocodone.
Prosecutors said Ms. Herman’s sister, also Dr. Burkes’s patient, discovered the truth in 2004, when she tried to fill a legitimate prescription and learned her name was being used to fill prescriptions she never ordered. The sister obtained her own medical records and discovered they had been modified.
Dr. Burkes was arraigned in New York Supreme Court yesterday on charges including criminal sale of a prescription for a controlled substance, falsifying business records, tampering with evidence, and perjury. If convicted of the top charge, he faces up to 15 years in prison.